This is kind of difficult to discuss in broad terms without referencing a bunch of IRL gigabullshit going on right now, but I think nobody would really appreciate this thread turning into "modern affairs" so I'll skip the specifics. Try to, anyway. Still, I could at least say some things.
Physical presence of people nearby or easy access to internet, television or radio news doesn't shield one from isolation or mistaken beliefs. People's intrinsic resistance to bullshit has harsh limits. That's one a tough cookie to grapple with, but I kind had had it thrust at me fairly harshly through entirety of this year.
We live in an age where entire nations in both first and third world demonstrate that is trivially easy to shield humongous layers of population from any inconvenient information through combination of filling their attention with garbage and cultivating "us vs them" and various spins on the "we are different, better" attitudes. Nvm using family connections. This bullshit, after certain critical mass, becomes self-reinforcing as people work to ensnare each other. Making otherwise mentally healthy people latch onto vile ideologies and stubborn denial while making them harshly attack anything that tries to shake them back into sanity.
I had closely interacted with a staggering amount of people who start the dialogue by vocally express doubts about about sources of information available to them, confide in their conviction that people around them are trying to bullshit them, proclaim themselves as capable of critical thinking and then launching into defense of corruption and genocide not a minute later. Worse, then they begin attempting to protect people who lie to them, exploit them, and abuse them. It is fucking surreal to observe in real life, but it is not an isolated case, this just how people are vulnerable to illness of the mind in the same way as they are vulnerable to a common cold.
There are dedicated studies on how for all seeming interconnected-ness of the modern age, plentiful access to information that modern digital information technologies allow, people typically prefer to exist in a very limited number of social groups, have a limited number of friends, and seek out information from a very limited number of sources. These are the vulnerabilities which cult and cult-like organizations used and continue using to fuck with people all through the history by pushing out the "undesirable" out of social reach and making sure that people have nothing left but to stew in cult bullshit, opinions of other influenced people and propaganda-masked-as-secret-insight even as they are physically surrounded by well-meaning, completely normal individuals.
That's just how people work. That one survivor "snapping out of it" and leaving the fucked up social group - which are typically their only family, friends, and coworkers - to search for different belief systems and different idols is an exception, not the norm.
This is a very complicated topic, tbh.
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